‘I’m saying I won’t put up a fuss.’
She shook her head in disbelief.‘Why does everything have to be a battle?’
Words that twisted his heart.‘Siwan, please.’
With a sigh, she stalked down the slope.‘Fine.’She headed back towards the midnight blue pavilion that marked the Silver Lake stage, bedecked in white flags like a full moon shattered into fragments.Llewyn allowed himself one last glance at the procession.The sorceress was still there, but he saw no glimmer of her spyglass.She leaned in her saddle towards the four-armed giant beside her, exchanging words Llewyn might once have gleaned with a cracked stone and a word of magic.
Afanan had plenty such stones, but Llewyn could no more use them than vanish in plain sight, any longer.
Whoever the woman was, he had given her no reason to think him any more than an ordinary man having a spat with his daughter.Yet the druid in Llysbryn had seemed little danger, when first he came to their performance at the inn.It was only on his return the next night, and the night after—his gaze not on the tumblers and players, but on the musician’s pit, where Siwan sat with her gittern—that Llewyn recognised the threat he was.
As Llewyn turned to follow Siwan, a nightjar called nearby, annoyed that the crowd upon the hillock had disturbed its bedding down for the day.He yawned, sympathetic, and rolled back his shoulders.They never used to ache, before.
Siwan disappeared into the backstage tent as soon as they reached the camp—either to put some finishing touches on her dress for the performance, or simply to get some privacy from him after their argument.Llewyn wanted sleep, but he wanted an outlet for his worries more.He lingered in front of the stage, in the audience’s pit, and watched the hillock.
Cheers wafted on the breeze, then faded as the tail of the funeral procession passed.Soon after, four figures approached the Silver Lake stage.Three were men grown.Harwick, the strongman, was as wide as a wagon wheel.His husband Spil, in contrast, was thin as a reed.They walked together, Spil’s hand disappearing entirely into Harwick’s meaty fist.Jareth followed behind them, an actor only a few years from middle age, with golden hair and chiselled features that seemed half a fae glamour.Ahead of them ran Damon, a lad just this side of boyhood.Ram’s horns grew from his mop of curly hair.
‘Llewyn!’Damon called.‘Did you see Prince Owyn?Stones, he had a severe look about him.Hard to believe we’re of an age.’
Damon was the rising star of the Silver Lake Troupe.Afanan had found him as an urchin on the streets of Glascoed, and adopted him into the troupe only a year before Llewyn met her in Nyth Fran.He’d started as a tumbler, but Llewyn had watched him draw from a deeper well of talent as he grew.Under Afanan’s tutelage he had learned to read and write, and now he not only performed in the troupe’s plays—though more often sidekicks or villains, while golden-haired Jareth took on the heroic roles—but wrote them and devised the set pieces.
Damon and Siwan had become fast friends—and were becoming more than that to each other, now that they were nearing adulthood.His expansiveness and skill inspired her.She had told Llewyn as much last time they had argued about her desire to perform on stage.And he wanted for her what Damon had—that confidence, that blossoming into his place in the world.But Damon was not stalked by the same dangers that would follow Siwan all her life.There was no risk, to him, in attention.No danger that someone in the audience might see him not as a talented performer, but as a tool to be taken and wielded, or as an abomination to be destroyed.
‘Also, I didn’t know the House of Abal were black of hair,’ Damon mused.‘None of the histories I read bothered to mention it.’
He perched his chin on the crook between thumb and forefinger and narrowed his eyes at Jareth.
Jareth glared back and tossed his golden mane.‘Donottell me to wear dye.’
‘It would be more authentic,’ Damon pointed out.
‘Oh?’Jareth snarled.‘Which do you prefer, Damon?Authenticity, or having both horns on your head, rather than snapped off and shoved up your arse?’
‘Now, now, boys,’ said Spil, interposing his reed-thin body between the two youths.‘The dye wouldn’t dry before tonight, anyway, and we won’t have time to find a replacement for the Beast-King of Galca if you impale Damon on his own horns.’
Jareth visibly chafed at being called ‘boy’, let alone being lumped in with Damon.
‘I’m irritated,’ he declared.‘I’ll need to sleep the rest of the afternoon if I’m to be any use tonight.Harwick, see that no one wakes me.’
Harwick nodded a solemn promise, then rolled his eyes as soon as Jareth’s back was turned.
‘The trouping life would be so pleasant if not for the egos of actors,’ Harwick mused in his rumbling voice.‘Present company excepted, of course.’
Spil poked Harwick in the ribs.
Damon laughed.‘Of course.I think of myself more as a playwright, anyway.’
‘Oh!’Spil put the back of his hand to his forehead and mimed fainting.‘The lad betrays our noble art!Cruel defection!And for what?’
‘Respectability?’Harwick ventured.
That elicited another poke to the ribs.
‘Jareth may be a ponce,’ Spil said.‘But he’s right that we all need sleep.’He tugged at Harwick’s hand and made for their tent.‘Come along, dear.’
‘Harwick,’ Llewyn interrupted.‘I need your help with something.’
‘Ach, another barrel to move?’The strongman rubbed his ox-wide shoulders and winced.He offered Spil an apologetic smile, then turned to follow Llewyn.‘Well, let’s be quick about it, then.’
